{"id":4002,"date":"2013-04-25T13:30:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T03:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=4002"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:24:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:24:50","slug":"kittys-war-by-janet-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2013\/04\/25\/kittys-war-by-janet-butler\/","title":{"rendered":"Kitty’s War by Janet Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kitty's<\/a>
Kitty’s War by Janet Butler, (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2013).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the kind of history I want to read.\u00a0 Thorough research, deep analysis and compelling writing, Kitty\u2019s War<\/i> by Janet Butler<\/a> engaged me from cover to cover.<\/p>\n

In Kitty\u2019s War<\/i> author, Janet Butler, does not merely recount what she has learned from the diary of World War I nurse, Kit McNaughton, she interrogates McNaughton\u2019s diary, draws heavily on a myriad of contemporary historical resources and produces a searching analysis of war, gender and the nature of diary writing while maintaining an engrossing narrative.<\/p>\n

Kit McNaughton served with the Australian Army Nursing Service from 1915 for the duration of the war.\u00a0 Initially stationed in Egypt, she served on the island of Lemnos treating men injured men at Gallipoli.\u00a0 After the withdrawal from Gallipoli she was transferred to northern France where she served in a number of hospitals in northern France treating enormous numbers of soldiers injured in the horrific battles on the Western Front.<\/p>\n

Looking back through my notes in my reading journal I see that I have repeatedly used the word \u2018perceptive\u2019.\u00a0 Butler does not take the diary at face value and the book is all the better for it.\u00a0 The chapters about Butler\u2019s service on the island of Lemnos treating soldiers injured at Gallipoli would have been bland if Butler had not dug deeper.\u00a0 Butler is sensitive to the cultural constraints under which the nurses worked.\u00a0 The ideals of a \u2018good nurse\u2019 required nurses to be stoic in the face of difficulty, ministering angels only thinking of the needs of the patient and not of their own.\u00a0 McNaughton reflects these ideals in her diary hence she makes little mention of the awful conditions under which she is working.\u00a0\u00a0 Drawing on other sources Butler allows the reader to understand the context in which McNaughton\u2019s diary is written.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The tents of the No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital where McNaughton worked on the island of Lemnos. (Australian War Memorial, photo C02097)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Lemnos the nurses suffered from lack of warm clothing and inadequate rations.\u00a0 Staffing levels were pitifully poor in face of the tremendous number of injured soldiers they had to treat.\u00a0 Medical staff suffered from diseases due to poor sanitation, diet and accommodation such as dysentery, pneumonia, beriberi and paratyphoid.\u00a0 By the end of the war one fifth of Australian nurses were assessed as \u2018medically unfit\u2019 on discharge.\u00a0 McNaughton suffered for the rest of her life from the illnesses she suffered during the war.<\/p>\n

Butler\u2019s chapter about Kit McNaughton nursing German prisoners of war in France encapsulates what I want to see in a war history.\u00a0 Just hours before I read this chapter I had written in a comment on the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge website<\/a>, \u201cI want to see a person\u2019s humanity revealed in a book about war, an appreciation of the moral tightrope on which they walk, their frailties as well as their strength of character\u201d.\u00a0 This chapter shows the mixture of antipathy, ambivalence and sympathy McNaughton felt towards the enemy soldiers under her care.\u00a0 It is only while nursing the Germans that McNaughton speaks of the horrific injuries that she sees.\u00a0 Like other nurses in the war she wants to support the Anzac story. Tales of injury and death of Australian soldiers would tarnish this image.\u00a0 However, when she is discussing her work for enemy soldiers she is released from this constraint.<\/p>\n

I extracted a bullet from a German back today, and I enjoyed cutting into him\u2026 the bullet is my small treasure, as I hope it saved a life as it was a revolver one\u2026<\/p>\n

Kit McNaughton, quoted in Butler p. 130<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Through Butler\u2019s guidance the reader understands that this says more than that which is immediately apparent.\u00a0 The nurses working in World War I confronted gender norms every day they worked.\u00a0 Under the sheer desperation of the times the nurses were asked to do work that was barred to them in civilian life.\u00a0 Here McNaughton is wielding a scalpel in surgery, an extraordinary thing for a woman to be allowed to do.\u00a0 Some nurses also administered anesthetics, another field from which the women were normally banned.\u00a0 While some male medical staff were supportive of the nurses others were at times hostile to their presence and work.\u00a0 To many people at the time, war was strictly a male domain.\u00a0 Women did not belong.<\/p>\n

\"Trolly<\/a>
Trolly on railway tracks carrying two men on stretches at No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station, Trois Arbres, c. 1917. Note the use of tents in this cold and wet region. (Australian War Memorial, photo P00156.061)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is the depiction of the months that McNaughton served at the No. 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station at Trois Arbres that benefit most from Butler\u2019s searching analysis.\u00a0 The Australian field hospital at Trois Arbres was only six and a half kilometres from the frontline.\u00a0 \u201cThe silences in her diary at the clearing station are profound\u201d, observes Butler.\u00a0 McNaughton had been writing in her diary daily for most of the war but after a few days at Trois Arbres the rest of her four-month period of service there was covered by only five diary entries.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Butler does what other biographers would do and goes to other sources to piece together McNaughton\u2019s time there.\u00a0 But she goes one step further and asks why did McNaughton stop her daily writing, why did she talk about trivialities while she was treating the tide of casualties from the 3rd<\/sup> battle of Ypres also known as Passchendaele.<\/p>\n

It is this questioning of evidence or the lack thereof that sets Butler\u2019s work apart from so many war histories.\u00a0 She contrasts the accounts of the male medical staff from those of the women. She compares the accounts of other nurses with those of McNaughton.\u00a0 A complex story emerges, of women who would quietly admit their fear but never draw attention to their feats, of the women\u2019s silence about the hostility towards them from some of their male medical colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 most diaries are written with an eye to an audience\u201d, remarks Butler.\u00a0 She observes that McNaughton\u2019s diary was not an outlet for emotional feelings and private thoughts.\u00a0 McNaughton wrote it with a view to sharing it with others.\u00a0 Butler explains that McNaughton saw her role as a diarist as being a \u201ctourist, a recorder of culture and a chronicler of the affairs of women, of family and of Anzac glory\u201d.\u00a0 Injury and death would tarnish the Anzac story so McNaughton\u2019s brief accounts of her work do not convey the magnitude of what she had to deal with.\u00a0 In order to better understand McNaughton’s life in the war Butler draws on a wide range of other sources.\u00a0 I have learned so much from reading this book about using diaries as sources of historical evidence.<\/p>\n

I also admire the skill that Butler employs to incorporate deep analysis throughout this book without compromising the narrative drive.\u00a0 There is a smooth interchange between the two.\u00a0 The analysis enhances the narrative.\u00a0 I was wiping away the tears while I read the story of the death of a soldier-friend of McNaughton\u2019s towards the end of the book.<\/p>\n

\"Logo<\/a>This is a standout depiction of life during World War I.\u00a0 Anyone can recount a story told in a war diary throwing in a direct quote here and there.\u00a0 The wartime diarists have often written enough to make an interesting book.\u00a0 But Kitty\u2019s War<\/i> is not a memoir.\u00a0 Janet Butler is a skilled biographer who critically examines McNaughton\u2019s diary.\u00a0 She pauses and asks if there is more to the story and invariably there is.\u00a0 The result is an enriched narrative with the depth of context needed to sensitively convey Kit McNaughton\u2019s wartime service.<\/p>\n

A review copy of this book was supplied by the University of Queensland Press.\u00a0 Thankyou to Lisa Hill for bringing my attention to it.\u00a0 You can read her review here<\/a>.\u00a0 This review is part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers Challenge<\/a> 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n

Addendum<\/h2>\n

12\/9\/2013: Kitty’s War<\/em> wins the NSW Premier’s History Awards prize for Australian History!\u00a0\u00a0 “I think that adds an enormous dimension to our understanding of Australia’s role in the war,” remarked senior Awards judge, Professor Richard Waterhouse, to ABC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2014:\u00a0Kitty’s War\u00a0<\/em>won the W. K. Hancock Prize<\/a> from the Australian Historical Association.<\/p>\n

I am very excited that such a deserving book has been recognised in this way and congratulate Janet Butler on winning this prestigious award.\u00a0 What can we look forward to next from this fine author?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kitty’s War by Janet Butler is an excellent biography of an Australian nurse who served in World War I. This sets the standard for war histories in terms of the excellence of writing, the depth of research and analysis. It is an absorbing and moving book which I recommend that everyone reads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,29],"tags":[37,43,49,106,143,194,199],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7136,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions\/7136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}